One Room

The sky is out there, vast and hovering over the earth which narrows, almost zooming into focus.  There is the location, a particular spot on the map.  Not only a small village but an even narrower vision of a room in a home.  The person is there, sitting and busy, with a torch shining on the busyness. 

Wrestless, waiting and agonised in these hours.

Gaping, gawking and a kind of frantic sense about that is restless.

The largeness and otherliness of the Great Wide World zooms from such magnitude to this tiny space of existence in but One Room.

It is here that everything happens and must happen.  Yes, everything.

All kinds of things which constitute a daily existence, a weekly and even monthly.

All in One Room. 

Not like other people and even houses next door who enjoy a life in many rooms.

There isn't a lock on the door and yet it's as if the strictest system is hemming us in for life-long imprisonment.  There was no force involved and somehow our free will has brought us to hell.

The letters and choices that decided this place are... well, where are THEY even?

The album, we cannot do.

The photo frame, shattered.

The message book, an abandoned project.

There isn't anymore.

We are there.  One Room, not at the start, or end, or even in motion.

The windowsill is full.  Everything is full, tight, occupied and cluttered.

They have their place.  Each thing.

Organised chaos surrounds the One Room.  Our lives, spent in One Room.

Five months, it didn't take long.

See-saw, see-saw, 'which' door.

We go up and stars twinkle above our foreheads as if they might never go out and gently caress the brow... wanting to stay... wanting more... to brush the fringe of the human head with gentle, loving fingertips.

Wham, it flies down.  Thud.

The devil is there.  He is laughing.  And more.

He is eating into our flesh.

One Room.  How sweet you look today in your organised way of being... of being, re-assembled.

Tonight you are quiet, very, very quiet.

You know don't you.

The writing is there, written word after word, all over your mind.  A mind full of words.

The zoning in view from the top of the earth, the heavens, read them.

Slowly, they read and stop with a deep breath.  They are not confused, they are not shocked, they are saddened and frustrated.

A dim light shines, flickers, goes out, re-appears.  Sometimes it seems it never ever ever will.  Momentarily pervades the darkness.  The lingering dark goes on for... almost ever.

One Room.  You are warm.  The season is changing.  You once brought something so different, did I mention VERY.

Walls of colourless substance you have watched me for six and a half years.

I'm sure you are not proud today, not here, not now, One Room.

Do you remember?  Not even that helps.

One Room.

Notebook

This is a great notebook in which I can write anything I like.  It's not a notebook for a certain subject - it's just for any old dam thing.  It's great to spend time on the page - baby sleeps momentarily and I have accomplished much for the day.

The sun is out but this house is chilly.  There are new things, places, people and seasons.  Everything I once had and loved has now altered.  What a season.  A chapter closes and the current season continues to test us to the limit. 

We are dynamite - us humans - with the possiblity of detonation at any given point.  Only God truly knows us and only God is truly trustworthy. 

August.

A new month in which old things pass away and new things spring to life... Here we go.

The past is no longer and can never be.

The future is our hope, destiny and my gem.

The Face

The face looked at me, it glanced at and away.  At times the glance became a stare - one of those that drink in every detail.  It wasn't unnerving, it was more telling, of the face and myself, like looking into a stream and seeing your own reflection.  The face faced me and I saw me facing myself.

LETTERS TO FRANK

March

Fragments of memory and limescale collide. Moments, time and two parts forged together. The time was rotten like meat that had been forgotten for months. The horror of the bombshells like war in Germany – the horrific scenes of mutilated flesh and chambers of gas. The cruel intensity of suffocation and what a human body does not endure.

How can anyone give advice or know right from wrong – no man truly knows. No man truly knows himself nevermind another.

It is one day, and one day at a time only, that reflections start to submerge or at least dwindle into a fainter existence. Reflections of them all, not worth mentioning, for the pain they transport. Reflections of a short semester of life being ripped out and apart at points where raw flesh would be left. A reminder, or course, of the torment and agony of such an existence.

Unreliability like the worst sailor at sea, who never knew what it was to mature. How can they expect me to digest these things, to travel smoothly forwards on the path as if the wall of China had not just been destroyed. Frank you never did grow up, although you thought your mind an ageing man, what of the rest? Single kids are selfish, they say, and true to the saying, I’d say.

April

They didn’t tell me Frank, I mean, they didn’t tell me things would be like this. They didn’t tell me things would go this way. Did you know Frank? You did, didn’t you? I can’t believe you never told me – how could you Frank?

May

It’s Monday, who knows what the date is… near to a time of celebration on the calendar and this year I’m not even counting the days.

Nobody knows about the country I’m in, a far and distant land with unchartered waters and undiscovered zones.

You know, it’s not even about Ziola. It’s about the friction and the now terrible festering wounds. The puss is there, flowing and oozing, making the body gag.

None of this existed before I met THEM, and of course it is plural. A horrible little triangle. Oh Frank, I hate the triangle – don’t counsel me to return to it. Triangles don’t work in the natural. Tell me Frank, what do you honestly think?

Will you let me know, find out if Mava agrees – she always did have a great sensitivity for these things. It’s just that … now, it’s my life we’re talking about. My life that seems to have been blocked and stopped, like a clock that stops ticking. I don’t even think it’s the batteries, I think it’s broken, completely broken.

Can Mava fix that?

Really Frank you know me, and I think I just really love to be alone. Especially in comparison to what some ‘togetherness’ can constitute.

It’s me, you know Frank. Not some horrible person. Remember how we used to tallk for hours as the sun set over the coffee house. Life was eternal and the beginning. The days of ‘anything can be achieved,’ and ‘anything could be conquered.’

Now, well, I can’t even write it Frank nevermind say it. Of course my life is no longer my own and has been utterly ransacked. And I know how it goes – the honeymoon is pretense, a reeling in of an unsuspecting fish (a tadpole). The sharks have to bite at some point. They did never did relent from day one.

Frank, the worst of it is this: what never was my fault or problem (like baggage that isn’t yours), is all of a sudden, overnight on a train, all my fault… all blame, guilt and ‘responsibility’ at my door! Like Israel was born in a day – miraculous – I reaped a whirlwind and tragedy overnight.

One has to ask someone knowing like Mava, how does one explain this and where in all the world’s libraries would an appropriate and soul-satisfying answer be located? The age-old question goes: what did one do so wrong?

Frank, you must reply without delay. For amongst the seething ----------, is great anguish. Tears as hot as flames and heartache as precise as the stabbing of a knife.

You have no idea how ‘easy’ some things are, Frank. Horrid things. People may say ‘how is this and that possible?’ And my answer Frank is, simply, easy. You’d be surprised how easy it is, how quick and how natural these things come to the natural soul.

I know for a fact today, Frank, that they await for me to sign up again to that which brings…

Dangling like a Christmas bauble in Spring

Fred is in the garden hacking away at the potato plant and they come flying off.

Fred has become incessant of late in wearing his green tracksuit bottoms all day.

Fred has taken to watching the most ludicrous serial comedy on Tuesday nights and he laughs himself sick when they perform the most usual of tasks on a daily basis.

At night, I'm sure Fred recalls the comedy in his sleep as he retells of events during his outspoken dreams.  Of course there are a million irritating habits that he brings. 

Fred thinks he's a 'forest' man.  He thinks he can talk about it as one who has had experience, he thinks he can meddle in the forest, and he thinks I see him as an expert in the field.  And guess what, I do not.  Fred knows nothing of the forest. 

Time

Wasted hours, precious time stolen and time goneby.
Tomorrow is almost here
Another day arrives
The time thief must steal no longer
For our time, you know, is almost up.

The Field

Early in the morning I could hear the horses softly crunching their hooves on the wet grass outside the window.  They were standing close to the fence that borders their field and lines the edge of the pathway at the end of the garden.  The foals leapt about and playfully tugged at each other whilst the adults walked serenely by and without any commotion.  The fresh and crisp country air marked the start of a new morning.

It had been an interesting time... the week before ... and the weeks before that.

And yet every day continued to march on to the next one that followed.

At times the mountains seem so incredibly high and perilous - the challenges that lie ahead of us, the drudgeries of life and the heartaches.  Then, all of a sudden, a new day dawns and the sunrise seems brighter than it has ever been before and it serves as a stark reminder of the infallibility of the Creator to surpass all that we know and think we know.